Ty Dolla Sign Cover’s Fader Magazine

In 2009, he scored his first hit as a producer and singer with YG’s “Toot It and Boot It,” rendering the song’s I met her in a club refrain doubly anthemic with a lilting piano loop. Underscoring his raw talent, he says he had initially considered the beat a throwaway when he made it. “It was the easiest song I ever made in my life, and for it to blow up I was like, damn,” he says, recalling that DJ Mustard had been trying to teach him the value of simplicity. “I didn’t [streamline my sound] at first cause he was the little homie and I was like, nigga? But I was trying to do too much. That was the math I was missing for a long time.”